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Bio

Laura Annawyn Shamas was born and raised in Oklahoma, and has lived in various places across the U.S., including Tulsa, Denver, and Los Angeles. She writes in multiple genres: theatre, non-fiction, fiction, film.

She graduated from UCLA (B.A. in Theater), the University of Colorado at Boulder (M.A. in English/Creative Writing), and Pacifica Graduate Institute (M.A. and Ph.D. in Mythological Studies). Shamas began studying mythology in 1997, and received her Ph.D. in 2003.

Her multicultural background includes Chickasaw, English, French, Irish, Lebanese, and Scottish heritage. She is an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation and is married to award-winning writer Jon Klein. Her playwriting is archived in the Native American Women Playwrights Archive at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. In 2017, she won the Von Marie Atchley Award for Excellence in Playwriting from Native Voices at the Autry for her short play Seeds.